PM cancels HS2 promising to reinvest cost into north and Midlands
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has cancelled the northern leg of HS2, promising to reinvest "every single penny" of the £36bn project cost into improving transport networks in the north and Midlands. Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 HS2 is the ultimate example of the old consensus.
00:05 The result is a project whose costs have more than doubled,
00:10 which has been repeatedly delayed,
00:13 and it is not scheduled to reach here in Manchester for almost two decades,
00:18 and for which the economic case has massively been weakened
00:22 with the changes to business travel post-Covid.
00:25 I say to those who backed the project in the first place,
00:29 the facts have changed,
00:31 and the right thing to do when the facts change
00:34 is to have the courage to change direction.
00:37 I am ending this long-running saga.
00:40 I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project,
00:44 and in its place,
00:46 and in its place,
00:48 we will reinvest every single penny,
00:54 £36 billion in hundreds of new transport projects
00:59 in the North and the Midlands, across the country.
01:02 This means £36 billion of investment in the project
01:06 that will make a real difference across our nation.
01:09 Every region outside of London
01:12 will receive the same or more government investment
01:15 than they would have done under HS2.
01:17 With quicker results,
01:19 no government has ever developed a more ambitious scheme
01:24 for northern transport than our new Network North.